3 Are you having trouble coming up with new content ideas? Are you looking for topics that are so interesting, your readers will actually want to read and share them with their friends? This guide will give you some ideas you can start using today that will generate a wealth of new content ideas and get your creative juices flowing. WHY YOU NEED FRESH CONTENT You probably already understand the benefits of content marketing and how creating great, authoritative content will help you build trust with your readers. However, let s review a few of the basics. Doing regular content marketing can help you: GENERATE LEADS Generating leads is a primary reason that most companies start creating content. However, it can be difficult and sometimes it requires more time than companies can contribute. In order to use content for lead generation, it needs to focus tightly on your client s wants and needs. RETAIN CLIENTS While content can be used to generate leads, it is frequently even more useful in helping companies retain clients. Fresh content can keep clients up to date on new products/services, and keeps companies top-of-mind with clients. It can help nurture clients who may not be ready to buy yet, and helps position your company as an authority in your niche INCREASE CONVERSION RATE Strong content can make the difference between closing the deal and having your customer walk away. Helping your potential client during the comparison process with the right content will show them how well you know your industry. 2

4 For example, if you are trying to sell file sharing cloud services, providing brilliant (and technically accurate) content on how customers can benefit from these cloud services will help show them you know what you are talking about and increase your conversion rate. SOLUTIONS The goal of this guide is to teach you how to get a steady stream of blog post ideas on a daily basis. Now let s get you started with some great ideas: 1. S AND NEWSLETTERS Every morning I wake up and my inbox is full of great ideas and opinions from people I know and trust that I can use for idea generation. By simply signing up to my favorite website s mailing lists, I get to read their best ideas on a daily basis. Responding to something you ve read Sometimes the ideas come from readers that need help with a problem. Taking a few minutes to read and reply to these can often be inspiring to give me new ideas for creating my own content. Q&A sites Q&A sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers can provide a plethora of ideas for content creation. The best part is that people have already shared some of their biggest problems and pains and you get to help them with detailed solutions. Here are two sites that you can quickly use for new content ideas (and get your questions answered while you are at it). 3

5 2. QUORA.COM https://www.quora.com/ Quora allows users to ask questions and get answers. When you first log in to quora.com, it will ask you to login to a social media profile so they can identify your account in the future. Here is an example for the phrase cloud computing : 4

6 3. YAHOO ANSWERS https://answers.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Answers is another option for coming up with ideas. I am really impressed with their auto-complete feature. Here is an example using the phrase cloud computing : 5

7 Once you understand the questions, it becomes easy to create a blog post to answer their questions and help them out. There are also many other options like forums within your niche that can be good for finding questions, but I found Quora and Yahoo Answers to be two of the fastest ways. 6

8 4. RSS FEEDS I recently ran a Twitter survey on how people came up with ideas for content; the most common answer was reading several websites. Using RSS feeds with a feed reader like Feedly can be a great way to read several websites at once. Feedly If you have never used Feedly before, it is simple to set up. Here is the getting started page: A lot of people that used Google Reader before Google announced its final demise now use Feedly. It has become a popular alternative to Google Reader and is one of my favorite RSS aggregators. Feedly allows a quick and easy transition from Google Reader. It also has a version for smart phones which can be a nice perk. 7

9 Here is an example of a content marketing Feedly page I set up: 5. ALLTOP Alltop allows you to see what s happening on several websites at once related to the topics you choose. It does this by collecting headlines for many of the top sites and blogs that are in your niche. It then aggregates all of this information on to an individual web page. When you first search Alltop, it will provide a list of available categories. You select your closest category and Alltop will list the websites that are popular in that niche. 8

10 When I typed in cloud computing for example, it listed hundreds of blog post titles that you can pick from: 9

11 Once selected, here is a list of blog titles that can be used for ideas: 6. SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE ANOTHER WAY TO GENERATE IDEAS FOR NEW CONTENT. Twitter Sometimes when staring at the computer and I can t seem to figure out what topics are important to my readers, I ll log in to Hootsuite and monitor a few of my favorite hashtags related to the topic. 10

12 Monitoring hashtags on Hootsuite is very easy. You simply create a stream for each group of hashtags and then scroll through the list. To add a stream within Hootsuite: 1. Sign up for a free account with Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/) if you don t already have one. 2. Select the Add Stream button 3. When the dialog appears (see below), go to the search tab and type the name of your search query. In my case, I chose #cloud to show me any tweet with the #cloud tag. 11

13 It will create a stream (column) in Hootsuite showing any new tweets with the #cloud tag. 12

14 7. THE COSMO METHOD The Cosmo Method was explained by Brian Clark from Copyblogger. It will work with many of the magazines that you see when you re in line at the grocery store. Brian suggested Cosmo because they do an incredible job of providing powerful headlines that get people to buy the magazine. To find some good suggestions, do a quick Google search for cosmopolitan magazine covers. Here s an example from the July 2014 cover. We can find a number of good article ideas by simply inserting your keyword. 13

15 Here are a few content related blog post ideas I came up with after reading this: Surprising Ways To Get More Readers To Your Blog My Content Is On Fire, What I Learned The Hard Way How To Know If Your Content Is Being Read By The Right People Make Your Content Roar In 2015! Any of these could be a great starting point for a powerful blog post. I actually used this method to create the title of this guide. 14

16 8. HUBSPOT S BLOG TOPIC GENERATOR Hubspot s Blog Topic Generator (http://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator) is a fun tool for coming up with some initial ideas for blog posts. You simply add up to three nouns in the search boxes on the right-hand side and select give me more blog topics! The website will quickly find five related blog post titles based on your keywords. One of the great things about this tool is that you can run it several times and come back with different results each time. While some of them may not be great, if you run it enough times, you can come up with some great ideas. 15

17 16

18 9. PORTENT S CONTENT IDEA GENERATOR Another tool that I really like is Portents Content Idea Generator. This can be a great way to break your mind out of its funk and help you think outside the box. All you have to do is enter a subject and click the arrow. The website will quickly give you a headline using popular formulas for headline generation. To make it even more fun, it provides extra comments about the different words it chooses which are frequently quite humorous. Here s a fun example I created using the phrase cloud computing: Much like the other tools, you can click the repeat button to generate more ideas until you find something that works. 17

19 10. BUZZSUMO When you are looking for a topic that people will read and share, Buzzsumo can be a powerful tool in your arsenal. After you create a free account in Buzzsumo, you will be directed to enter a search phrase. Buzzsumo will show you a list of results, and how many times each post was shared on different social media sites. I frequently change the filters on the left-hand side of the search screen so that only articles and guest posts are shown and I filter by date to one month or less. If I m only interested in things that are currently trending, I set the filter to 24 hours. 18

20 Buzzsumo gives me a great understanding of which keywords and blog posts are currently being shared. 19

21 HOW TO USE YOUR NEW-FOUND IDEAS Once you have a bunch of ideas bouncing around in your brain, what can you do with them? Obviously, you don t want to copy other people s work (aka plagiarism), so you can use one of the techniques below to create a new, unique piece of content that both your readers and the search engines will love. DISTILLATION Whenever you come across highly technical topics, you can use the distillation method to simplify the important ideas into something your readers can easily understand. Distillation allows you to use only the most valuable ideas within the content and share them in your work. If done correctly, this can have the added benefit of saving your reader time by distilling the key concepts for them. MASHUP Whenever I think of a mashup, I m reminded of music mashups where musicians combine songs (sometimes from entirely different genres) to make something new. A similar method can be used with writing. You can mashup two or more posts to create a brand new point of view. TIPS TO IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY I ve found it helpful to create a group of tabs from different websites in the guide in my web browser and then save them in my bookmarks / favorites menu. This way, whenever I feel like I ve run out of ideas I can quickly pull up several tools to help get me back in a creative frame of mind. 20

22 EVERNOTE There are many ways to store all of these ideas. Personally, I have found Evernote to be a great way to keep up with it all. I like to tag each item as it comes into Evernote to make it easier to find in the future. A basic account for Evernote is free. I used that for a long time before my database grew so large I had to get a five dollar per month premium account. CONCLUSION I hope you ve enjoyed my guide. Over the years, I ve uncovered several methods to find new blog post ideas, but these are some of my favorites. If you have questions or would like help creating new content ideas, please visit my site at 21

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